What Are Laser Diodes?
The laser diode is a further development upon the regular light-emitting diode, or LED. The term "laser" itself is actually an acronym, despite the fact it's often written in lower-case letters.
"Laser" stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, and refers to another strange quantum process whereby characteristic light emitted by electrons transitioning from high-level to low-level energy states in a material stimulate other electrons in a substance to make similar "jumps," the result being a synchronized output of light from the material.
This synchronization extends to the actual phase of the emitted light, so that all light waves emitted from a "lasing" material are not just the same frequency (color), but also the same phase as each other, so that they reinforce one another and are able to travel in a very tightly-confined, nondispersing beam.
This is why laser light stays so remarkably focused over long distances: each and every light wave coming from the laser is in step with each other:
Incandescent lamps produce "white" (mixed-frequency, or mixed-color) light. Regular LEDs produce monochromatic light: same frequency (color), but different phases, resulting in similar beam dispersion.
Laser LEDs produce coherent light : light that is both monochromatic (single-color) and monophasic (single phase), resulting in precise beam confinement.
Laser light finds wide application in the modern world: everything from surveying, where a straight and nondispersing light beam is very useful for precise sighting of measurement markers, to the reading and writing of optical disks, where only the narrowness of a focused laser beam is able to resolve the microscopic "pits" in the disk's surface comprising the binary 1's and 0's of digital information.
Some laser diodes require special high-power "pulsing" circuits to deliver large quantities of voltage and current in short bursts. Other laser diodes may be operated continuously at lower power.
In the latter case, laser action occurs only within a certain range of diode current, necessitating some form of current-regulator circuit. As laser diodes age, their power requirements may change (more current required for less output power), but it should be remembered that low-power laser diodes, like LEDs, are fairly long-lived devices, with typical service lives in the tens of thousands of hours.
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